Pharmaceutical firm Astellas has agreed to buy US-based bioelectronic medicine developer and portfolio company Iota Biosciences for an undisclosed sum.
Iota is working on ‘neural dust’ technology developed at University of California (UC) Berkeley with a view to its use in millimetre-scale implantable medical devices. Astellas intends to invest $125m in the technology in the next five years.
The corporate joined investment firm Shanda, Horizons Ventures, Bold Capital Partners and Ironfire Ventures in Iota’s $15m series A round in mid-2018 before signing a research and development agreement with the company in August 2019.
Kenji Yasukawa, president and chief executive of Astellas, said: “I believe that Iota’s technology is a promising core technology that can be applied not only to the current programmes we are working on, but to broader types of diseases that have yet to be worked on.”
